Jason Goertzen during his appearance in the Wellington District Court, after pleading guilty to a charge of rape and three charges of indecent assault. Photo / Ethan Griffiths
Warning: This story discusses sexual violence.
“It doesn’t take much for me to be transported back to that scared young girl. My life fractured, I did not know what it was like to feel safe.
“To you, I was a slut. In reality, I was just a young girl who wanted to do well in school.
“You were in a position of power and you abused it horrifically.”
Those were words young victims of Kāpiti man Jason Goertzen had waited more than ten years to say to his face. For the first time in their lives, they had the power, not him.
Goertzen, in his fifties, was sentenced on four representative charges of sexual violence last week; one of rape and three of indecent assault.
Wellington District Court Judge Stephen Harrop stressed the charges didn’t represent just four instances of offending, but years of sexual abuse.
The court heard from four women. All had experienced brutality and violation at the hands of Goertzen and one was just nine when she was repeatedly groped.
Goertzen’s victims cannot be identified due to statutory non-publication orders. They addressed the court for two hours, reading victim impact statements Judge Harrop said were the most eloquent he’s heard in his career.
“I still struggle with feelings of worthlessness and vulnerability. It isn’t normal to burst into tears when your teacher asks you how you are,” one victim said.
After one statement lasting nearly 30 minutes, Goertzen smirked as the victim returned to her seat.
According to the summary of facts, in September 2011 Goertzen violently raped a woman he knew in her own home, grabbing her with such force she was left with bruises. He forced her against a bathroom sink as she begged him to stop. The attack meant she couldn’t face returning to the room in her home for years, she said in her victim impact statement.
Goertzen also repeatedly indecently assaulted three girls between 2007 and 2014. One of the teenagers had her breasts groped “twenty to thirty times” over two to three years, as well as being touched on the vagina.
Another victim, also a teenager, had her breasts and crotch groped and hands placed under her underwear.
The youngest of the victims suffered sexual offending for years, beginning when she was just nine. No private part of her body was spared from the abuse, lasting between 20 and 60 minutes each time.
“For a child, that must have seemed a lifetime,” Judge Harrop said. “[The victim] wasn’t in a position to escape from your clutches.”
Crown prosecutor Tim Bain said for the charge of rape, the offending was at the serious end of the scale. For the three charges of indecent assault, he said a sentence starting point of three and a half to four years was appropriate.
Judge Harrop settled on seven years for the rape charge which he said had “a clear feature of degradation”, and four years for the indecent assaults. Applying the totality principle, the starting point landed at ten and a half years.
Goertzen’s lawyer Val Nisbet said a discount of 10 to 15 per cent for Goertzen’s guilty plea was appropriate. He said during the offending his client used alcohol excessively, as well as some drugs.
“He is acknowledging as best he can that the harm he has caused has been profound,” Nisbet said.
He said his life was previously on track, once playing for New Zealand’s national hockey team on the world stage.
Judge Harrop, while noting the pleas came only shortly before a scheduled trial, granted a sentence discount of 15 per cent for Goertzen’s guilty plea, reducing the sentence to eight years and eight months.
The eight months were discounted due to Goertzen’s remorse, leaving an end sentence of eight years’ imprisonment. At the end of the hearing, the judge acknowledged the victims when addressing Goertzen.
“Any sentence you receive will be shorter than theirs,” he said.
Ethan Griffiths covers crime and justice stories nationwide for Open Justice. He joined NZME in 2020, previously working as a regional reporter in Whanganui and South Taranaki.
OPINION: New Zealander reflects on delivering speech at St James' Palace.